Brown Jelly ????

[RichT]

I have this brown jelly like stuff that's bent on taking out my SPS one colony at a time. I've tried dipping with Procure and running various media to no avail. Anyone have any good info/links on this stuff?

Thanks.

Temp 79.8 - 82.1
PH 8.1 - 8.3
ORP 400 - 430
NO3 - 5
Ca - 400
Alk - 3.5
PO4 - 0 (D&D high sensitive)
Mg - 1350

 

[Phyl]

Hard to believe that perfection can result in tragedy. By the looks of your numbers alone, everything looks spot on to me (except for the fact that I'm ORP ignorant). Brown jelly taking out your SPS? Do you have a picture of what it looks like in progress? Any families in particular?

 

[RichT]

Started with a couple monti's then on to the Acro's. I'll try to get some pic's. As you've seen,some bleaching too! The LPS, shrooms, and kinda the zoos are doing well if not good. Newer but weak from go, 14K Blue Lines.

 

[mladencovic]

Started with a couple monti's then on to the Acro's. I'll try to get some pic's. As you've seen,some bleaching too! The LPS, shrooms, and kinda the zoos are doing well if not good. Newer but weak from go, 14K Blue Lines.

From the description loks lke some bacterial or viral growth. Have you tried garlic?

 

[RichT]

I'll give that a try...I have some Kent Garlic extreme around here somewhere. *sniff* *sniff*

Thanks

 

[mladencovic]

I'll give that a try...I have some Kent Garlic extreme around here somewhere. *sniff* *sniff*

Thanks

I would go with squeezed real thing. I am not sure that all antibiotic components would survive in Kent's solution.

 

[twan]

I had some attack and kill my Xenia in 24hrs. It might have been salinity and a PH swing that brought it on. To this day I am not sure.
Did it looks like this?

Here is an article for you:
http://www.ericborneman.com/Brown Jelly /Brown Jelly.html

 

[RichT]

Hard to tell as it's attacking my SPS right now. ONE BY ONE!!!!!!

Anyway, went to the store, got some fresh garlic, and pressed a clove into the tank. How often would you suggest I do that Mladen?

Thanks for the read twan.

BTW, if I don't get this stink off my hands, I'll be sleeping on the couch tonight.

 

[panmanmatt]

BTW, if I don't get this stink off my hands, I'll be sleeping on the couch tonight.

Lemon juice

 

[mladencovic]

I took a look on the web for brown jelly and have found quite a few sites. These advocate the iodine dips. I assume you have already tried that and the rest of the stuff they are talking about.

http://www.ericborneman.com/Brown Jelly /Brown Jelly.html
http://reefshow.com/html/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=60#Brown Jelly
http://www.athiel.com/lib/bacterial.html

When I had something that I have assumed was infection on my bird's nest (small blister like bubbles lifting skin from the skeleton. I was dosing a couple of cloves every few days. After a week a rapid spread of the disease stopped and I discontinued the garlic. The disease was still present but was going on a much smaller pace and in a month or two was completely gone. So, while garlic hasn't cured it completely, I like to belive it helped a bit.

 

[RichT]

Thanks for the links. I quickly checked out borneman's article and I'll check out the others as well.
Early on, I used some of the Tropic Marin Pro Cure on several colonies only to watch them die. I'm at my wits end with this stuff. Beautiful colonies reduced to nothing and nothing apparent to cause it.

Thanks again

 

[mladencovic]

Rich,

I am curious how did your problem go? Have you applied anything and is there any progress?

 

[RichT]

I've been doing the garlic as you suggested. Fresh cloves and a press. I've also started dosing Iodine weekly. Unfortunately, my SPS are pretty much decimated at this point. Little by little, one by one. I can only hope it doesnt spread to the LPS once the sps are gone. (Actually, the LPS haven't looked better and are continue to grow.) As far as nutrients, PO4 is reading 0 (high sensitivity D&D) and NO3 is below 10 above 5 (Salifert on the low scale). The rest of the parameters are in line w/suggested NSW. I also did some aggressive water changes (3 @ 50% over 2 weeks) which didn't appear to help. TDS is 123 in - 001 out. The bulbs are newer but didn't appear to have any affect either way as the problem was apparent before the bulb change. At this point, I'm thinking there may be some type of contamination I haven't been able to find yet. I have noticed a couple flakes of paint (regular latex interior) are missing from the wall behind the skimmer but I wasn't able to locate. I hate to say it but I would be somewhat happy to find an elusive penny in the sump so I can at least understand what's going on.

Thanks for your concern Mladen. I'll keep plugging away until I nail it down. 
 

 

[mladencovic]

Brown jelly is a bacterial disease, so the real answer is finding an antibiotic that will not affect either the nitrogen cycle bacterias nor zooaxentelas not be harmfull in any other way to the rest of the tank crew.

As a matter of fact I would really like for all for us to poll together and find something that can combat this disease to some degree. Helping you will help all of us because this is much more serious and bigger. Our tanks are now so much interconnected with frag trading and swapping, LR and LR seeding and fish and crew exchanges, that what you have is probably present in many other tanks, just probably didn't flare for some reason or is kept in check for some other reason.

 

[blange3]

Sorry to hear about your struggles Rich!

Are you keeping an eye on the iodine levels since you are dosing that frequently?

I went on weekly lugol's binge a while back due to having too much time to surf RC. It was amazing how fast I could get out of control without testing. :

 

[RichT]

I've only dosed 3 weeks now. My plans are that if I don't see improvement, which I doubt I will, by the time the bottle is done (3+/- more left) I'm going to discontinue dosing.